Plasma ions are often used during manufacturing of semiconductor devices. For example, ion implantation is used to accelerate ions from a plasma towards and into a substrate in order to implant the substrate with various dopants. With some plasma processes, the plasma is formed with the aid of radio frequency (RF) waves emitted from an RF antenna.
The RF antenna may be located within a plasma chamber and enclosed within a dielectric sleeve. Alternatively, the RF antenna may be located outside the plasma, with a dielectric window disposed between the RF antenna and the substrate.
During the plasma process material may be deposited onto the dielectric sleeve or the dielectric window. If sufficient material is deposited onto the sleeve, the functionality of the RF antenna can be compromised. In such cases, the system must be shut down and the deposits removed manually. It would be desirable, therefore, to provide a system and method for removing such deposits automatically so that the deposits are being continually removed/cleaned from the surface of the dielectric, thereby eliminating the need to periodically shut down for manual cleaning.